Seth Meyers on What to Expect from Trump's Big Speech Tonight

It's the morning of the King's Speech. While we all wait to hear more about how the dishonest and failing media is causing all the real problems, it's worth looking back at how President Trump and his administration have prepared for the big moment. Seth Meyers provided a window into that last night:

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Meyers is right that things got a little weird when the president previewed his infrastructure plan. His vision of falling tiles in the Lincoln Tunnel—presumably causing injury, multi-car pile-ups, and traffic jams that tear open the space-time continuum—is a little much. The MTA, which oversees the tunnel, released an unimpressed statement in response: "Not a single person has been injured by any falling tiles because no tiles are falling," MTA director of communication Beth Defalco said. "They are being replaced by workers as part of an infrastructure project to repair the tunnel from Hurricane Sandy damage."

But Meyers' potshots here are also wide of the mark. The nation's infrastructure is crumbling, and it's good policy—one that breaks from today's conservative dogma—to set aside funding for the government to step in to fix the problem. Business is for it, unions are for it. It will create jobs. And it will lower the risk that someone gets hit with a falling cigarette-stain-yellow tile in the Lincoln Tunnel. It's a lot more defensible than the president's position on healthcare, which is that he doesn't have a plan, but it'll be a very good plan when he has one, and also healthcare is very complicated, which nobody knew, but now they know. God help us.

All of this pales in comparison, though, to the president's extended siege of our democratic institutions, none more so than the free press. President George W. Bush became an unlikely hero of democratic values and rhetorical eloquence when he jumped on the Today Show to defend the role of a free, independent press in our republic—and take a veiled swipe at his once-removed successor. As Meyers pointed out, while it's a nice development, it does more to illustrate just how far the bar has been lowered—that is, to somewhere in the earth's rocky crust.

"That basic platitude about democracy and a free press," he said of Bush's line, "is now considered a brave criticism of our president." We'll need some more of that—but we'll also need to fight like hell to raise the bar again.

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